Haig & Mackichan Join DiAngelo for Tricycle\’s Loot

David Haig and Smack the Pony’s Doon Mackichan (pictured) will join
EastEnders and Strictly Come Dancing star Matt Di Angelo in the Tricycle Theatre’s major new revival of Joe Orton’s 1965 black comedy Loot (See News, 19 May 2008).

The production – directed by Sean Holmes, who has just been appointed as the new artistic director of the Lyric Hammersmith (See News, 14 Oct 2008) – runs at the Tricycle in Kilburn, north London, from 15 December 2008 (previews from 11 December) to 31 January 2009. Also now confirmed for the cast are Jim Creighton, Jams Hayes and Javone Prince.

The comedy centres on ne’er-do-wells Hal and Dennis who stage a bank heist. But the heist goes wrong and, pursued by police inspector Truscott, the two are forced to hide the loot in an unlikely place – the coffin of Hal’s recently deceased mother. Meanwhile, Nurse Fay works her dubious charms on Hal’s father.

The last major West End outing of Loot was a Chichester Festival production that transferred to the Vaudeville Theatre a decade ago (See News, 15 Oct 1998).

Matt Di Angelo, who played Deano Wicks in EastEnders for two years and was most recently seen competing on Strictly Come Dancing, makes his professional stage debut as Hal. Javone Prince, currently at the Young Vic in In the Red and Brown Water, is Dennis. David Haig is the unscrupulous Inspector Truscott and Doon MacKichan is Fay.

Haig’s most recent stage credits include The Sea, The Country Wife, Donkeys’ Years, Journey’s End, Mary Poppins and Hitchcock Blonde. While best known for her TV work in Smack the Pony and Gladiatress – which she co-wrote and performed – comedienne Mackichan also has an accomplished theatre CV with credits including Mother Courage, The Queen and I, A Respectable Wedding, The Queen and I and, in the West End last year, Boeing Boeing.

– by Terri Paddock